to challenge the schools nuts ban

[pigglewiggle]

The school has a strict no nuts policy. Apparently this is because someone in a higher year has a peanut allergy. I can understand banning peanuts if the allergy is severe but peanuts are very different to normal proper nuts and reactions to these are not to my knowledge anywhere near as bad as peanuts. It just makes lunch quite difficult as we are vegan and would love to pop something like a nakd bar in lunchboxes.

Aibu to go to the school and at least establish if a total ban on nuts is needed / necessary?

I'm glad / surprised this discussion has progressed beyond the "it must be deleted" and childish responses about other peoples diets.

The thing is nuts aren't just an ingredient in my diet, they along with seeds are a very prominent part of it. so they should be as fats and protein from natural unprocessed sources are vital for a healthy diet.

Thanks bruffin. I suspect a considerable number of supposed 'airborne' reactions are actually from indirect contact (on hands or tables or suchlike). The risk of a child developing a reaction to somebody eating a nakd bar at the other side of the room I suspect are slim to non-existent. Even if it were airborne, how exactly would the particles transmit? It's not like a cloud of dust is released when you munch on a cereal bar. The risk is therefore exactly the same as for children with dairy or egg allergy, and nobody talks about banning those. It sucks having a child with allergies, whatever they are, and all allergens can cause contact reactions. All this nonsense about milk allergy only happening if it is 'digested' is another side effect of there only being nut bans because they are easy to enforce. It sets up an entirely mistaken hierarchy in people's minds about nut allergies being worse than any other.

And I'm totally with you about the nuts being an important protein. We are not vegan, but if you take out dairy from the equation, nut butter is a pretty key part of DD's diet. Luckily, her school doesn't have a nut ban. On the other hand, her teachers have managed to inadvertently offer DD dairy chocolate at least three times (luckily she was clued up enough not to accept, despite being only 5 at the time). The nut allergic child in her class, on the other hand, has not once been offered a peanut. Go figure who is more at risk.

in fact in one hand we have schools giving out allergens twice daily for free. yogurt milk,custard,cheese sauce,cheese on jacket potatoes, chocolate in cookies.

and on the other we have a substance banned.

how does that really add up

I suspect a considerable number of supposed 'airborne' reactions are actually from indirect contact (on hands or tables or suchlike).

They can also be psychosomatic, as the paper showed, one person had a reaction to the placebo

Erm, give your kids something else? Nuts aren't usually kids' favourites anyway.

I'm not adding anything to this discussion other than as a mother it must be the hardest thing in the world to send your child to school with a known life threatening allergy, leaving their life in the hands of others. I would have been a nervous wreck every day. This thread had given me so much to think about, there must be traces of these foods everywhere now as people are munching non stop nearly every minute of the day!

pigglewiggle
The thing is nuts aren't just an ingredient in my diet, they along with seeds are a very prominent part of it. so they should be as fats and protein from natural unprocessed sources are vital for a healthy diet.

It's really not difficult to make a vegan packed lunch without nut products and to save your children's nut consumption for other times.

Giles Perhaps banning nuts is more commonplace than banning other allergen containing food because of the prevalence of nut allergies and the relative ease of excluding nuts in a particular envionment. That said, I would hope that schools give very careful consideration to the risks posed to any child with a life threatening allergy, and use a policy accordingly, regardless of how awkward that might be for others.

It's not about how awkward it is for others that's the issue really. It's not that hard when you know what your looking for to provide a lunch that's minus various ingredients.

The problem is that ban nuts and majority of people would be fine with that.

If a school turned round and banned say milk or eggs. I'm sure there would be alot more outrage. If kids are expected to ho without nuts for example then on the same note it's not hard to not put a cake or a yogurt in then l lunch box. However I'd lay money on the fact that there would be huge out cry about it and it just wouldn't happen because soya milk and milk substitutes are ore expensive and sponges are a big part of school dinners as they are a cheap way of filling up the kids.

as I and others have said when people hear allergy they hear nuts. not one other allergy on this thread, despite people reporting reactions from being in the classroom where they were making pizza, is given the same consideration. I think. It raises a huge issue tbh. because this thread has shown that other allergies are trivialised.

If other allergies are managed without banning offending foods then why can't this one be?

There's an awful lot of handwringing on this thread!

I've been seriously allergic to peanuts since the 1960s, when managing allergies was an awful lot more complicated. Overall, though, I'd say that of all my allergies while peanut is probably among the most dangerous, it's also one of the most manageable. It's a very easy allergen to avoid. Peanut isn't in a lot of foods, and those "may contain" warnings can usually be ignored (note: this wasn't always the case, but contamination is a much smaller problem now than it was 15-20 years ago). And people are relatively aware of and sympathetic to nut allergy, which is much less true of other food allergies.

If I had to choose which of my food allergies to cure it would be mustard, far more complicated and life-altering - try buying a quick sandwich or salad in Tesco if you're mustard allergic!

Something to think about...

I worked in a school where an older pupil had a peanut and other nut allergy. The school offered to ban all nuts but the response was no, that wasn't fair on everyone else, and it should be fine. But it wasn't. People opening peanut butter sandwiches on the other side of the dining hall caused problems. Children didn't wash their hands and trace amounts on door handles caused problems. The pupil ended up on daily piriton, then had a severe reaction and ended up in A&E. School banned nuts. Parents complained and STILL sent DC in with peanut butter sandwiches, despite being told about the serious reaction and the need for no peanuts in school. Staff had to resort to saying, face to face to the offending parents - "Do you want to kill a child, because your DC likes peanut butter?"

This pupil had always been fine in the wider world - it was the closed world of school with the lower supervision levels for hand washing etc that caused the problem.

To add to that - I was pg at the time and throwing up a lot. One of the few things I could eat safely was nuts. I had nuts for breakfast and washed my hands VERY CAREFULLY before going into school, then a smaller nut-free lunch, and a nutty snack after school once I was home.

If I eat almonds and don't use my epipen, I will probably die.

You can get seed only bars - try 9Bar Pumpkin. Yummy!

Misti - DD is allergic to milk, bananas and mustard. It's the mustard that worries me the most! We've found milk pretty easy to avoid, and bananas are a no-brainer. But mustard is hard.

Seeds are just as bad as nuts. Sesame seeds get everywhere

DC's school is nut free but they don't make a huge fuss and don't make any assumptions (i.e. still take precautions as if there were nuts around). I was slightly startled when I took DS's birthday cake in and the new head accosted me with "I hope it's nut free". To which I went and pointed out that although there were no nuts in it, I don't run a nut free house so there was always the possibility of contamination.

My came from the fact that I happen to know that the only child with a nut allergy in DS's year also has a series of other complicated and life threatening allergies, including milk, so there is no way in hell he would be eating any cake brought in by a random parent, nor would I want to cook for him without consulting his DM as to exactly what was safe.

I put it down to new head coming to terms with what he has inherited and being a bit paranoid as a result. There are no rules against bringing in cakes, and never have been.

Well of course I could make a lunch box vegan, just shoving in some crisps and some fake meat proccesed product. But its very difficult to avoid nuts and make a healthy vegan lunch box that's a ballanced meal, that they will eat.

To the pp that said some nakd contains peanuts, I'm pretty sure they dont as I have a mild peanut and pistachio reaction, the trek bars do and the crispy ones contain soya, that we also avoid.

make your own sugar bars, rather than buying them from the health food con-men. That way you can control the ingredients, not add nuts and not rot your child's teeth.

Pigglewiggle what part of 'this child may die if exposed to nuts' don't you get?

oh but pigglewiggle is a vegan dusty!

Duatypink
you arw being extremely ignorant

Mistigri Whilst I agree that mustard might be a trickier proposition to avoid than nuts (and even harder in France, where mustard is commonly grown/consumed, and mustard allergies are prevalent), it is possible to find salads and sandwich alternatives in supermarkets without mustard.

Giles
On the one hand you say:
It's not about how awkward it is for others that's the issue really.

On the other, you say:
If a school turned round and banned say milk or eggs. I'm sure there would be alot more outrage.

Is that not (at least partly) because it would be perceived as awkward?

As for sponges, it's not difficult or expensive to make sponges without milk or eggs, although I thought they were featured less frequently in school dinner menus these days.

Not sure why you think that non nut allergies are being trivialised. Nut allergies attract attention presumably because they're prevalent and likely to be life-long.

Interesting post, bronya. We don't have things in the house to which my son is allergic - I know (based on the habits of household members) that cross contamination would be an issue.

pigglewiggle

Well of course I could make a lunch box vegan, just shoving in some crisps and some fake meat proccesed product. But its very difficult to avoid nuts and make a healthy vegan lunch box that's a ballanced meal, that they will eat.

Firstly, it's not a case of including nuts vs including fake meat and crisps. There are loads of options available to you. Unless you're saying that your children won't eat food that doesn't contain nuts...

Shouldigetascooter: people allergic to other foods manage to go to school without a ban against their problem category. Nuts and peanuts are really no different than egg, dairy or spinach allergies. I have a friend allergic to lamb, for goodness sake. Nut allergic, as well as those with other dietary allergies, go into restaurants serving these foods with no harm, they sit beside people eating these goods on the bus or in the park to no ill effect. Adults with peanut allergy can sit right next to someone eating a peanutbutter sandwich in the breakroom with no issues. Somehow, the nuts in another child's lunch at school are deadly dangerous despite the lack of hazard presented off campus? It makes no sense.

If the full panoply of potential dietary allergens was banned at school as nuts and peanuts are, school would have to end at lunch time so everyone could be sent home to eat in the safety of their own home.

Actually, apparently some children and adults are so allergic to nuts that they can't be in the same room as them.

I appreciate that a nut ban is annoying if nuts are an important important part of your diet, but avoiding nuts for your midday meal doesn't seem too difficult - children are only in school for a 6-7 hour stretch.

Having said that, I don't see any harm in checking with the school in this situation. They can only say no.